A rational criticism of Benkler’s ignorance of financial needs is long overdue. By ignoring commons-based production that is for-profit, Benkler essentially misses out on the miracles of eBay, iStockphoto and Zopa. Instead, he seems mainly concerned with the promise of the likes of Wikipedia and in Benkler’s defense, he does constrain his peer-production thesis to the distribution of products of information (mainly media) and in that realm, I think that Benkler is correct and that Carr will be proved wrong — the popularity of information products is their currency, so amplifying the value of media by distributing it for free will always make more economic sense for these products that have no marginal cost of distribution — the upsell opportunities that popular media creates for professional services is exactly why quality media should be free — because it is counter-intuitively more easily monetized when you do give it away.

As a blogger, Carr’s an idiot for not realizing this and he has in fact already been proven wrong — the open source software movement has been with us for 10+ years and it’s not going anywhere. Microsoft is not winning market share from Linux.

I wish that Benkler would rather challenge us to rethink models like eBay’s — what if the central control of this for-profit commons-based production was also commons-based or at least not-for-profit.

1.) the innate need for group identity – the feeling of belonging to something is a powerful motivation

2.) whether people realize it or not, contributing to a community satisfies some portion of legacy-building, they’re leaving their mark on the world (even the smallest mark will do)

3.) the need to stand out, for others to recognize me for the smart person I am and what I have to offer

Some of these tie nicely into the comments that Laurence left, go to any church bake sale or fundraiser and you’ll see loads of people freely donating their economic wherewithal (time, money, brownies, etc) for the greater good of the “community”.